What is the difference between Sprint and Iteration in Scrum and length of each Sprint

Question

Is there a difference between Sprint and an Iteration or one can have Iterations within a Sprint or Sprint is just the terminology used instead of Iteration in Scrum  It will be helpful if someone can throw some light on this  Suppose there are 4 sprints and you have decided the first sprint will go up to 10 days is it required that other 3 sprints should have the same length of the 1st decided sprint s length

User · Accepted Answer

All sprints are iterations but not all iterations are sprints. Iteration is a common term in iterative and incremental development (IID). Scrum is one specialized flavor of IID so it makes sense to specialize the terminology as well. It also helps brand the methodology different from other IID methodologies :)

As to the sprint length: anything goes as long as the sprint is timeboxed i.e. it is finished on the planned date and not "when it's ready". (Or alternatively, in rare occasions, the sprint is terminated prematurely to start a new sprint in case some essential boundary conditions are changed.)

It does help to have the sprints of similar durations. There's less to remember about the sprint schedule and your planning gets more accurate. I like to keep mine at 2 calendar weeks, which will resolve into 8..10 business days outside holiday seasons.

User · Answer

Sprint    Iteration   The lengths can vary  but it s a bad planning precedent to let them vary too much   Keep them consistent in duration and you will get better at planning and delivering   Everything will be measured by how many 10-day sprints it takes to finish a series of use cases   Keep them consistent in length and you can plan your deliveries  end-user testing  etc   with more accuracy   The point is to release on time at a consistent pace   A regular schedule makes management slightly simpler and more predictable

User · Answer

Sprint is just the term for an iteration  You can change the Sprint length to be anything you want  but likely you ll want to try to find an amount of time that  works well   which may mean any number of things for your team  and end up sticking with it over time

User · Answer

The important thing about a sprint is that  within a sprint the functionality that is to be delivered is fixed   A sprint is normally an iteration  But you can for example have a 4 week sprint  but have 4 one week  internal  iterations within that sprint   There is a lot of discussion about the length of sprints  I think that if you do it according to the book they should all be the same length   We have found that a short first sprint to get the development environment up and running  followed by longer basic functionality sprints  then short sprints towards the end of the project  has worked for us

User · Answer

According to my experience   Sprint is a kind of Iteration and one can have many Iterations within a single Sprint  e g  one shall startover or iterate a task if it s failed and still having extra estimated time  or across many Sprints  such as performing ongoing tasks   Normally  the duration for a Sprint can be one or two weeks  It depends on the time required and the priority of tasks  which could be defined by Product Owner or Scrum Master or the team  from the Product Backlog    ref  https   en wikipedia org wiki Scrum  software development

User · Answer

Iteration is synonymous with sprint  sprint is just the Scrum terminology   On the question about sprint length  the only caution I would note is that in Scrum you are using the past sprints to gain a level of predictability on your teams ability to deliver on their commitments for the sprint   They do this by developing a velocity over a number of sprints   A change in the team members or the length of the sprint are factors that will affect the velocity for a sprint  over past sprints   Just as background  velocity is the sum of estimation points assigned to the backlog items  or stories  that were completely finished during that sprint   Most Agile proponents  Mike Cohn  Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland for instance   recommend that teams use  the recent weather  to base their future estimations on how much they think they can commit to in a sprint   This means using the average from the last few sprints as the basis for an estimate in the upcoming sprint planning session   Once again  varying the sprint length reduces your teams ability to provide that velocity statistic which the team uses for sprint planning  and the product owner uses for release planning  i e  predicting when the project will end or what will be in the project at the end    I recommend Mike Cohn s book on Agile Estimating and Planning to provide an overview of the way sprints  estimation and planning all can fit together

User · Answer

is largely an organizational issue caused by long hours  little down time  and continual peer  customer  and superior surveillance   No this is not the definition of scrum  it is the wikipedia excerpt on the definition of burnout   Dont do too many short 10 days sprints  You will burnout your team eventually  Use short sprints where you really need them  and don t do too many in a row  Think long-term  A distance runner always paces themselves for the full race and does sprints in short distances only where it matters   If you burnout your team you can toss out all them fancy scrum charts  they won t do a thing for your team s plummeting productivity

User · Answer

Where I work we have 2 Sprints to an Iteration   The Iteration demo is before the business stakeholders that don t want to meet after every Sprint  but that is our interpretation of the terminology   Some places may have the terms having equally meaning  I m just pointing out that where I work they aren t the same thing  No  sprints can have varying lengths   Where I work we had a half a Sprint to align our Sprints with the Iterations that others in the project from another department were using

User · Answer

Sprint as defined in pure Scrum has the duration 30 calendar days  However Iteration length could be anything as defined by the team

[agile] What is the difference between Sprint and Iteration in Scrum and length of each Sprint?

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